LA VIEILLE VILLE

Mahajanga is a great place to stroll around. If you want to visit the city center (restricted area), walking or taking a tuk-tuk is the best way to go. But don't forget that it's hot almost all year round, so don't go out during the hottest hours of the day! The old town is concentrated in a rectangle formed by boulevard Poincaré, avenue de France, quai Orsini and rue du Maréchal Joffre. It's worth taking the time to stroll through this center with its right-angled streets and fortified houses, vestiges of the Arab presence in the ^18th century. The district is especially fascinating when the shadows lengthen and the elegant ladies, draped in gold, emerge from the bougainvillea-lined courtyards, at a time when people gather around the vendors selling kebabs, cooked manioc and fried food. You'll see the remains of centuries-old Arab trading posts: carved wooden doors, arabesques and the old Indian mosque. Colonial-style houses (almost all in disrepair), tinted in different varieties of ochre, display their balusters, varangues and columns. In the windows, embroidered white cotton sails flutter in the wind, revealing a look, a smile. The port is extremely busy in the morning and at the end of the day. Rice, cotton, wood and cement are loaded and unloaded from red, blue and green dhows and cargo ships. Further along the Quai Orsini, past the customs building, the boat graveyard offers an impressive sight of wrecks of all shapes and sizes, pirogues and rusty sheet metal.